What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

The greatest miracle of love is the cure of coquetry.

In friendship, as in love, we are often more happy from the things we are ignorant of than from those we are acquainted with.

Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.

If we had no faults, we would not derive so much pleasure from noting those of other people.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

Old people are fond of giving good advice; it consoles them for no longer being capable of setting a bad example.